For those of you who have read my article on FPL’s monopoly you know that I have a huge problem with how they conduct business. Judging from the comments left by other Floridians, I’m not the only one with this position. I just received an email from FPL where they’re announcing the upcoming rate increases. One of the headlines that stuck out in the email was this one:
WE HAVE PROGRAMS TO HELP YOU GET MORE CONTROL OVER SUMMER BILLS
Let me tell you about my situation and how they’re helping me.
Coincidentally, my living situation serves rather perfectly to get talk about the point that I’m going to make. I moved into the house I’m living in last year in August. When I moved in, I asked the landlord what his monthly utility bill was, and he told me ~ $180.00. Unfortunately the first bill that came was a far cry from that amount, it was near $500.00 I called up the landlord and told him that I was going to withhold the difference on the first rent payment, to make up for the extra cost.
The situation is unfortunately such, that the thermostat and the A/C in my house are running on 1960’s level. Most likely when the house was built, the unit was able to handle the work load. From what I can tell, having been on construction for many years myself, several additions have been made to the house after that. What that means is that the A/C unit probably only had to cool only 3/4 of the space it does today. Being someone that really needs air conditioning since I do heat up rather easily, inside temperatures above F 75 make me miserable. After a while of living there, it became clear that the house A/C wasn’t able to cool all rooms sufficiently, so in order to get the room cool enough that I’m in mostly, I told the landlord to get a room unit. He agreed to get one, which I was very thankful for.
As described above, the cooling unit itself is not up to today’s standards and I actually know that for a fact, since I just had an FPL rep come to my house the other day, to determine whether there were any energy leaks. By leaks in this context I’m referring to devices, appliances or whatever, that uses substantially more energy that it should. It was determined after an hour of testing, that the main contributor to the high bill is the A/C. That’s not the only problem though. The actual problem here is that the thermostat is mounted in the wrong room and that room happens to be the living room, which has two skylights in it. Since I live in Florida, sunshine isn’t a rareity which causes that room to heat up rather quickly. Due to the reason that the A/C isn’t strong enough, it will stay on for hours trying to cool the house down. I’m literally taking about the unit pumping for hours, with the unfortunate effect of about one room being cold enough for my standards.
Before I had called FPL, I started to fix and caulk anything in the house that would let our air. From caulking the front windows, to getting foam strips for cracks in doors, I tried to do everything I could to make sure the air kepts inside.
As you can see, I’m trying to make a conscious effort here to get my utility bill under control, but the problem is the following. I live in Florida, and standards and regulations aren’t exactly something they follow here. When I had the FPL rep at my house I kept asking what else I could do to combat the problem, and he kept babbling about some type of programs that I could apply for, programs that assist customers with insulating their houses or whatever other items that can help keep the bills down. He also said that I most likely wouldn’t qualify, because where my house isn’t greatly insulated, it’s insulated enough for them to say they can’t help me with the rest.
I wouldn’t really have a problem with FPL raising their rates, and me having to insulate the house myself, in order to keep the house insulated enough if I didn’t know for a fact, that FPL has a monopoly, and that I never get the feeling as they’re really trying to help their customers. Concerned and proactive customers like myself, are left to scratch their head about what to do to save money on the bill. I can suggest to the landlord to have the entire A/C unit replaced (likely to happen?), and I can continue to find more ways to insulate the house. Seeing that neither of these items are very likely, I’m seriously considering not renewing the lease for the house, since I don’t feel like giving FPL hundreds of dollars per month.
The lack of standards, and mainly the enforcement of them, is what makes this situation so bad. Renters can’t be expected to have to make improvements to the house to combat these types of situations and FPL shouldn’t have as much freedom to do whatever the hell they want with customers. I asked the FPL rep what the company was doing in terms of renewable energy sources, and he had no answer. I found that rather surprising since he measures energy usage..
This article was written by Alex - Author's Website
